Tyan 2099GNNR Raid Problem
I have a Tyan 2099GNNR motherboard with the MBFastTrak133 embedded IDE Raid Controller.
I have 4ea Western Digital 80GB IDE HDDs. They are all the same model with the 1MB cache and are all ATA100 drives. I am using them all on the raid controller connections with the boot drive as one volume (2nd connector master), two drives in a RAID 0+1 (performance setting) raid volume (slaves from both ide connectors) and a single drive as the 3rd volume (master 1st ide connector).
On the regular IDE controller I have a Sony DVD RW, a Sony CD RW and a Samsung DVD ROM..
I am using the latest Tyan MB bios 2099v110 which is reported as i845E v1.10 020504.
The MBFastTrack133 lite bios is shown as 2.00.1.23.
I am using MS Win2k as the OS and it is updated with the latest patches.
I am using Norton Systems Works 2003. I use the speed disk utility to defrag my hard drive.
I have been occaisionally getting blue screens when defragging my hard drives. This occurred yesterday.
Normally I just reboot and everything is OK. Today the system would not boot.
The Promise controller said all 3 volumes were functional but it never booted.
I did some initial troubleshooting and the system will boot only if volume 1 (the boot drive) is connected.
I reflashed the bios, but no improvement.
I replace the power supply. No joy.
If I connect either volume 2 (the 2 slave drives in a raid 0+1 performance stripe) or volume 3 (the 1st IDE Connector master drive in a single drive raid 0+1 configuration) or both the system goes just past the point where you can hit CNTRL F to enter the fast trak utility.
When I disconnect both volumes 2 and 3 the system boots and win2k appears normal.
The first time I was able to get the system to boot after the blue screen it ran check disk.
I have been lazy and have not backed up since just before Christmas. I have a lot of digital photos on the 80GB (single drive) volume and music I purchased on line one the 160GB volume.
I noticed this forum and thought maybe someone could help...
Is there a add in card that will work in lieu of the onboard controller?
I appreciate any assistance....
V/R
Steve Koratsky
I have 4ea Western Digital 80GB IDE HDDs. They are all the same model with the 1MB cache and are all ATA100 drives. I am using them all on the raid controller connections with the boot drive as one volume (2nd connector master), two drives in a RAID 0+1 (performance setting) raid volume (slaves from both ide connectors) and a single drive as the 3rd volume (master 1st ide connector).
On the regular IDE controller I have a Sony DVD RW, a Sony CD RW and a Samsung DVD ROM..
I am using the latest Tyan MB bios 2099v110 which is reported as i845E v1.10 020504.
The MBFastTrack133 lite bios is shown as 2.00.1.23.
I am using MS Win2k as the OS and it is updated with the latest patches.
I am using Norton Systems Works 2003. I use the speed disk utility to defrag my hard drive.
I have been occaisionally getting blue screens when defragging my hard drives. This occurred yesterday.
Normally I just reboot and everything is OK. Today the system would not boot.
The Promise controller said all 3 volumes were functional but it never booted.
I did some initial troubleshooting and the system will boot only if volume 1 (the boot drive) is connected.
I reflashed the bios, but no improvement.
I replace the power supply. No joy.
If I connect either volume 2 (the 2 slave drives in a raid 0+1 performance stripe) or volume 3 (the 1st IDE Connector master drive in a single drive raid 0+1 configuration) or both the system goes just past the point where you can hit CNTRL F to enter the fast trak utility.
When I disconnect both volumes 2 and 3 the system boots and win2k appears normal.
The first time I was able to get the system to boot after the blue screen it ran check disk.
I have been lazy and have not backed up since just before Christmas. I have a lot of digital photos on the 80GB (single drive) volume and music I purchased on line one the 160GB volume.
I noticed this forum and thought maybe someone could help...
Is there a add in card that will work in lieu of the onboard controller?
I appreciate any assistance....
V/R
Steve Koratsky
0
Comments
The 2 drive volume is still not accessable.
I have also been able to boot from the c drive connected to the IDE controller.
I still need help trying to get data off of my 2 drive volume.
Can I purchase a PCI card IDE raid controller then connect the drives to it?
Does it have to be a promise controller or can I get an adaptec or other brand controller?
Does anyone have any recommendations?
V/R
Steve Koratsky
You could certainly try an add-on IDE Controller. The only hitch I'd see with that is that a decent one might cost enough to justify replacing the MB, plus the fact that it's a longshot to try and recover your RAID array on any controller but the one it was created on. You may be able to do it with a partition recovery utility.
In all honesty, I used to be a big fan of RAID, but with today's fast drives it's usually not worth the hassle. If you've got big bucks for a heavy-duty card it can really make your system fly, but as you've found, regular backups are a must.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102027
and get your data back if in fact the it's the controller that went bad. If it's a disk that went bad, you're kind of out of luck unless you want to pay lots of money to recover your data.
But, no garuantees either way.